Madonna has Wrinkles!

The latest IPMS Journal - the National Convention issue - just arrived in my mailbox. 

If you haven't seen a copy of the Journal lately, it is probably a lot nicer than you remember. A few years ago a new team took over producing the magazine and brought in a new printer; its now a slick full-color publication (you can see some sample articles here).  The Nationals issue has pictures of every model that won a trophy at the show, and the photography is awfully good for an all volunteer effort. Above are a scan of the cover and just one of about 50 pages of show results.

This is awesome, except for one thing... all the models in the magazine appear to be perfect. Since I judged a few of these models and ogled many of the others, I know that while they are all very good models, only a very few had none of the tell-tale signs of being built by humans; almost every model there had something wrong visible if you put your eyeball about 3 inches away and looked long and hard enough.

Of course the reason they look perfect is pretty obvious: the tiny building and finishing errors that judges look for are pretty much invisible in a 2 inch x 2 inch photo.

While there isn't any conspiracy involved, this is a little like the fashion magazines that Photoshop pictures of celebrities and super-models to appear prison-camp thin - with glowing, blemish-free complexions - and so make young women think they have to be malnourished to be attractive. Modelers looking at just pictures in magazines may be telling themselves "I could never build that good", when in fact they already do. 

So by all means look at the model magazines for inspiration and ideas, just don't give yourself an inferiority complex!

P.S. I was going to put an un-retouched photo of Madonna here but I chickened out; if you want to see the inspiration for this post try typing "retouched celebrities" into your favorite search engine.

Don